Move, rotate and scale objects

A placed object in a map or mission can be moved, rotated and scaled, alone or in a group. Studio saves the change as object edits and moves only the edited objects in the view. Most changes do not reload the scene. See When the view reloads.

Before you start

Open a project. Without one the placement fields are disabled and the Inspector shows Create a project to edit.
Open the map or mission. See Open a map or mission.

Move, rotate or scale an object

Click the object in the 3D view, or its row in the Object tree.
In the Inspector, find the placement group. Its title names the coordinate space, for example World placement or Local placement.
Type the new values in Position, in meters.
Type the new values in Rotation, in degrees around X, Y and Z.
Type the new value in Scale. Scale is one number for all three axes.
Press Apply transform.

The object moves in place. The Changes tab gets one row for it, for example Tree: scale 3. The fields start from the current edited values, so a second Apply on the same object updates its one row.

Only the fields you changed are saved. A field you left alone keeps its current bytes, so an unchanged rotation is never re-encoded. An Apply with no change saves nothing.

A SpeedTree tree is one placement too. Its group reads Payload placement, and Scale resizes the whole tree.

Drag with the handles

In the 3D view toolbar, pick Move, Rotate or Scale.
Select the object. Arrows (Move), rings (Rotate) or square handles (Scale) appear on it, one per world axis: X red, Y green, Z blue.
Drag a handle. A yellow box shows where the object will go.
Release the mouse. Studio saves the drag as one object edit, the same as Apply transform.

Rotate turns the object around the world axis of the ring you drag. Scale is uniform, because the game stores one scale. Every handle scales all three axes. Dragging the center square up or to the right makes the object bigger. Select goes back to plain selection. When an object gets no handles, hover the tool button for the reason.

Group objects

A group is a set of objects that are selected and transformed together. The project saves it. The build ignores it. How projects store edits describes how a group is stored.

To make a group:

Select an object.
In the Object tree, open Groups and press New group from selection. Or, in the Inspector, open Add to group and choose New group.

Studio names it Group 1, Group 2 and so on. Type another name in the group’s Inspector. The Groups list shows only while a map is open in a project.

To add an object, select it and choose the group in Add to group in the Inspector. To take it out, press Remove from group in its Inspector, or x next to it in the group’s Inspector. Removing the last object removes the group, unless the group holds collision parts. Delete group removes the group only. Its objects and their edits stay.

An object can be in one group only. Only an object that gets handles can join a group, so lights, trigger volumes and collision instances cannot.

A group can also hold collision parts. Choose them in the collision Inspector, then use Add to group there. See Edit parts of a shape. In the group’s Inspector, Select collision parts chooses them again, even after the map reloads. The group transform moves them with the objects, in the same undo step. The pivot covers both. Show the Collision layer first. Without it Studio refuses the change, so no part is left behind. Remove collision parts takes them out of the group. A part can be in one group only. A group holds up to 50,000 collision parts.

Select and transform a group

Click the group’s row under Groups, or press Select group in a member’s Inspector. Every member is selected and outlined in the 3D view.
Drag a Move, Rotate or Scale handle.

The handles sit at the group’s center: the middle of the box around the members’ positions. To type the change instead, fill Move by, Rotate by and Scale by under Transform group in the group’s Inspector, then press Apply to group. Rotate by is in degrees around X, Y and Z.

Each object moves through its own parent space, so objects with different parents move together. One drag or one Apply is one undo step for the whole group. The Changes tab gets one row per object.

Scale works in two ways:

The center square, or the same value on all three axes, scales the whole group. Positions spread from the center, and objects that store a scale grow by the same factor. A spawn point stores no scale, so only its position moves.
An axis handle, or different values per axis, spreads positions along that axis only. Every object keeps its size, because the game stores one scale per object.

A group change saves every object or none. When one object cannot take the change, nothing is saved and the status bar names the object. A group gets no handles when one of its objects has none, or when a static instance and the placement that holds it are both in the group. Objects of the group that are not in the open map show dimmed in its Inspector and stay where they are.

Turning a spawn point writes a full rotation into its row. Whether the game reads more than the spawn’s heading is unverified.

Group changes are not undo steps: creating, renaming and deleting a group, and changing its members. Object names work the same way. An older Studio cannot open a project that has groups.

Name an object

Select the object.
In the Inspector, type a name in Name in this project under the object’s title.
Click elsewhere. Studio saves the name in the project.

The name replaces the object’s label in the Inspector, the Object tree and the 3D view. The original label stays below it in the Inspector. A placement’s parts share one name. Clear the field to remove the name. Names are labels inside Studio only: the build ignores them, and undo does not cover them. An older Studio cannot open a project that has names. Tree search still matches the original labels.

Undo a change

Choose Edit > Undo or press Ctrl+Z.

Edit > Redo or Ctrl+Y puts it back. The view updates in place both ways.

Revert an object

Select the object.
In the Inspector, press Revert object.

Or right-click its row in the Changes tab and choose Revert. The object returns to its installed placement.

What follows the object

Studio rebuilds the values that depend on a placement from the installed data every time it reads or builds the project:

the object’s bounding box and the bounding box of its table, which the game uses to cull it;
the static collision that copies the object’s transform;
for a SpeedTree tree, the box of its cell and the box of its payload.

The game culls each static instance by its box, so a stale box would hide a moved or scaled object. Static collision internals explains both rules.

When the view reloads

A placement-only change moves the object in place. The scene, the loaded meshes and textures, the camera and the selection stay. This includes the first edit of a static instance that shares its table with other instances: the build gives it a table of its own, and the view still moves only that object. A SpeedTree tree moves in place too.

A few placements reload the map instead, such as a reflection probe, a placement that anchors a squad, or one that owns terrain or water. The reload keeps the editor in view and shows its progress in the status bar. Viewport performance has the full list.

How the edit is stored

The project stores the values you set, the row they target and a hash of that row’s installed bytes. How projects store edits has the detail.

Limits

Some placements show Placement read only. Hover it for the reason. Studio has not decoded their layout for writing. Scale appears only for placements that store a scale.

Apply can also refuse an edit. The status bar names the reason. A static instance edit is refused when:

another unedited object at the same transform shares its collision;
its collision sits at the same place but at another rotation or scale;
its collision compound is placed more than once.

A SpeedTree tree edit is refused when its payload shares its instance data with another payload, because the edit would move both.

Opening the object’s source asset still allows the generic property and byte editors.